Frustration in Kent over water supply disruption

Residents have expressed anger as water supply issues cause misery for thousands of people across Kent during soaring temperatures. South East Water (SEW) has blamed the demand for water amid the hot weather for causing outages at 18,000 properties on Wednesday, and urged customers to use water for essential purposes only when they have supplies. On Thursday South East Water's incident manager, Matthew Dean, said 22,000 people had water supply problems. In Whitstable, Kent, he said 8,000 customers had no water as reservoirs reached critical levels. And 14,000 customers had low pressure or intermittent supply in Tankerton, Ashford and surrounding areas, Ulcombe, Cranbrook, Coxheath, Headcorn, Herne Bay, Charing, Challock and Molash. Dean added on Thursday afternoon: "Parts of Whitstable will see supplies returning later today, and this will continue through to tomorrow morning. "Tap water is likely to remain intermittent across the weekend." The company's Steve Benton said it had delivered almost 230,000 litres of bottled water to vulnerable customers on its priority services register. He said: "We have also delivered bottled water to critical care settings such as care homes, GP su